


Two Possible Futures

by KannaOphelia



Category: Azumanga Daioh (manga)
Genre: F/F, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-25
Updated: 2006-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 22:12:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KannaOphelia/pseuds/KannaOphelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two short stories about best friendships, love, and looking to the future.</p><p>1) Tentacles: Tomo was like that. Or Yomi was. It was bad enough that Yomi was developing an affection for octopi. She could no longer even eat takoyaki without a guilty feeling</p><p>2) No Substitute for the Real Thing: Sakaki is never quite the girl she wants to be and never quite has was she yearns for, but now she has Maya, surely miracles can happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Possible Futures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [romana03](https://archiveofourown.org/users/romana03/gifts).



> I promised I'd write you a story some day. <3 I hope I'm better at keeping secrets from you than I think!

 

 

**I. Tentacles**

Yomi didn't generally think of karaoke as something girls like herself did. That was for, well, the _other_ kind of girls, the kinds who swapped cutesy booth photos of themselves surrounded with bunnies and flowers, who wore short skirts without worrying about their legs, the kind of girls who... had boyfriends.

Yomi didn't have a boyfriend, she had Tomo, and sometimes that was a depressing thought. She'd pointed out to Tomo on numerous occasions that any boy would have difficulty asking a girl out when he had to get at her through an obnoxious octopus that Yomi was apparently in love with, until finally she'd crack and attempt to part Tomo's loud mouth from the rest of her body. Somehow, in the aggressive joy of the struggle, it didn't matter quite so much that she could feel the clinging tentacles winding even closer around her.

Tomo was like that. Or Yomi was; it didn't always seem to matter in which direction the blame lay. It was bad enough that Yomi was developing an affection for octopi. She could no longer even eat tako-yaki without a guilty feeling.

Whatever Yomi thought of the gulf between herself and habitual karaoke users, there seemed a reasonable chance that Christmas karaoke would become a tradition in their group. Yomi believed that if you did anything, you practiced until you were as good as you could possibly be. It worked for exams; there was no reason the same principle couldn't hold for singing.

Besides, she really, really loved singing.

She cast a dirty look at her companion. "I didn't _ask_ you to come, you know." She knew it was useless. Wherever went, Tomo would somehow turn up in the same place. It was fate, or something like that. She could sooner fight off a killer octopus than expect to actually go somewhere and have fun without Tomo bobbing up. It had been that way since Yomi had been a small child and she had grown so accustomed to it that she glumly thought it would be the same when she was eighty.

"Someone had to come to administer first aid to the victims."

"Ha, ha. Besides, the booth is soundproofed."

"Yes, but what if it cracks under the strain?" Tomo began knocking on the walls. "You know, at certain frequencies walls can shatter. Oh, no, I can see a crack here! I need to warn the people in the next booth to run and hide!" She bounded onto one of the benches and bobbed up and down with mock anxiety.

"That's glass, stupid. And only with pure tones."

"The city is saved! Your singing is just purely awful!"

"Shut up! And knock that off," Yomi warned, noticing that Tomo had forgotten the anxiety and was bouncing up and down with greater vigour as she enjoyed the sensation. "You can't jump on the seat here - we'll get thrown out! What are you, a six year old? Get down!"

"How's anyone going to hear me? Idiot. They're protected from the horrors of your voice." Tomo began to bound higher, defiantly, her legs bending sharply at the knee with each movement as she pushed herself towards the ceiling.

"Cut it out! Stupid..." Yomi lunged for her friend, arms coming tightly around her waist. The two teetered for a moment before Tomo fell on top of the other girl, bringing her crashing heavily against the door. They collapsed together in a spluttering heap, Tomo's foot tangled in Yomi's skirt, as the door fell open.

Yomi took a moment to regain her bearings. When the neon stars and dashes interfering with her vision cleared a little, she pushed off Tomo, who was rubbing her head and whimpering, and prepared to deliver righteous wrath "You -"

" _Idiot!_ " a voice from the next booth finished, its door swinging open a little.

Yomi listened wide-eyed for a moment, and then hauled Tomo, by the waist, back inside the booth.

"Ow! What're you trying to- "

"Sssh!" Yomi signaled frantically, her attention on the voices. She pulled the door nearly closed, and leaned against it, listening with all her might.

_"No wonder you can't get a boyfriend, sin-singing like that."_

"Shut up! Like men are lining up for you!"

"Hey, it's Yukari and Nyamo!" Tomo whispered, her eyes brightening with interest. "Maybe we should go say -"

"No! Shut up!" Yomi spat in an undertone, gesturing wildly at Tomo to keep it down. For a wonder, her friend obeyed.

_"Yeah, well, maybe I don't care, anyway. Maybe I'll just go ahead and get married."_

"Your arranged marriage. Riiight."

"Well, maybe I should. I don't want to spend the rest of my life getting drunk and doing karaoke with you every Christmas."

"Maybe y'should. Hey, what's wrong with kara... kara... karaoke, anyway? Apart from the fact that you can't sing. Nyaaaaaamo can't sing, she nyaaaas like a cat..." Miss Tanaziki sounded, Yomi figured, considerably more drunk than Miss Kurosawa.

"Are those two ever apart? They don't even seem to enjoy it!" Yomi whispered, mostly under her breath. She turned on Tomo suddenly, the words hissing through her teeth, almost inaudible but sharp as a whip for all that. "Do you ever worry that _this_ is our future?"

"What? Nah. Those two are such losers, they're stuck together for ever, because no one else will have them." Miraculously, Tomo was also speaking at a barely audible volume, apparently having decided not to give the game away... yet. Yomi didn't trust her not to break into cheery song at any moment. She always did score higher at karaoke than Yomi.

"Yeah, right." Yomi didn't bother to repress a glum sigh. "Nothing like us." "

"Nah, you and me, we're fate. Why do you care, anyway?"

"It's just depressing." Yomi struggled to turn her attention back to the conversation. She was aware of Tomo next to her, eavesdropping just as hard, and was aware of a slight twinge of guilt. But then, she knew that while she wasn't a living monster like Tomo, she wasn't entirely nice, either. To small helpless things like Chiyo, maybe. But she was no angel.

 _"What's stopping you from just tellin' your mother okay, go 'head and arrange it? Get married. Better'n men in bars. Octopuses."_ Miss Tanaziki's monologue was an inebriated ramble, and oddly enough Miss Kurosawa was making no attempt to interrupt. " _Never liked that, didja? Marriage gotta be better'n better'n..."_ She trailed to a halt, then started with renewed vigour. _"So what's the problem?"_

"I - nothing. No reason at all." There was a silence. _"Unless..."_

"Unless what? You can do what you like."

"Yeah. Hey, Yukari? Do you even remember why I said I'd never get married?"

There was the sound of movement. _"Hey, Nyamo, I'm bored with this. Let's blow this... this... thing. Place. Mushy conversation, boring. Wanna go?"_

"Sure. Um, Yukari?"

"Wha'?"

There was no apparent response, at least not verbally. After a while Yomi determined that the conversation was, somehow, finished. Maybe Miss Tanaziki had passed out. If she could only look, she would know... Burning curiosity seized her, and she carefully rationalised it. The teachers probably saw enough of their students anyway, so it was best to discreetly leave, and if it so happened that the way out led them past the other booth, she could hardly be blamed. Responsible and polite, that was Yomi. She grabbed Tomo's elbow and hauled her out.

"Ow!"

"Shut up!"

As they walked past, she cast a quick glance into the next booth, and felt heat rise prickling up her neck. She could _feel_ , without looking, Tomo's mouth shape to form "Whoah!" She shushed her sharply as she pulled her past and to the exit.

As they came out into the crisp air, Tomo's face split in a grin. The fairy lights out for Christmas made it seem even more wicked than her wont, illumined in changing lights of red, green and yellow. _Demonic._

"Worried we'll end up just like them, huh?" She flung one of her scarily flexible arms, the arms Yomi would be prepared to onswear were either mutiply jointed or tentacled, around the other girl's neck and ground her knuckles into her skull.

"Shut up, idiot!" Yomi struggled to free herself.

Tomo waited until Yomi had failed to throw her off, then relaxed her grip, her arm coming more gently around Yomi's neck, affectionately and almost tenderly. Yomi was almost used to this, the roughness melting unexpectedly into casual contact that was somehow not entirely casual but entirely _right._ Now, cheeks aflame with personal humiliation and more sympathetic embarrassment for her oblivious teachers, she wanted to remove the contact, but didn't quite know how.

"Depressing?" Tomo asked, challengingly. She was leaning into Yomi's face, the way she was almost clinging bringing her eyes very close to Yomi's, and Yomi could see herself reflected back, changing colour as the lights flickered.

"Yeah. Depressing," Yomi said, the corner of her mouth was lifting into a smile almost despite herself. After all, she never refused a challenge, at least not from Tomo.

They moved off down the street together, giving their teachers space to leave without being embarrassed, and somehow Tomo's arm remained around Yomi's neck, and Yomi's arm crept around Tomo's waist. It was easier to balance that way, that was all, and maybe being enfolded in the embrace of an octopus was not the worst thing in the world.

No one could be entirely depressed at Christmas.

* * *

**II. No substitute for the real thing**

Sakaki bid her parents good night, her voice characteristically grave and earnest, closed her door quietly, then spun and spun and spun on the tips of her toes, repressing a shriek of joy.

"Maya, Maya, Maya!" she whispered to herself, with fierce triumph.

The stuffed cats on her shelves and bed seemed to smile at her, sharing her happiness, as she danced around the room, undressing and climbing into her pyjamas. She moved gracefully, her natural athletic ability displayed in a way that would seem impossible when her stiff, self-conscious dancing at school was taken into account. Here with no audience but her cats to notice that she was too tall or humiliating relegation to the boys' side, and buoyed up on her own bliss, she danced almost like a princess in a fairytale. She snatched up one particularly fluffy toy and hugged it hard, imagining the way Maya would mew with mock protest and then cuddle more closely into her embrace. _Maya!_

Her wild dance failed at last and she snuggled under her covers at last, shutting her eyes to better savour memories and hope. To be loved by a cat - not any cat but her perfect cat, brave and vulnerable and _cute!_ Sakaki had been dreading leaving school and the only real friends she'd ever had; now, with a future shared with a cat, she could hardly wait for her life to come. She wished she could have found an excuse to sleep over Chiyo's house again, but it was only a matter of waiting before Maya would sleep snuggled against her shoulder every night. Her very own cat!

There was only one shadow on her consciousness of perfection, a shadow that deepened once she was in darkness and her high mood began to descend with approaching sleep. Somehow, Sakaki didn't quite like the memory of Yomi and Kagura scolding Tomo over her scratched hand the evening before. The memory kept replaying in her head, making Sakaki feel a little cold in the midst of all her warm, glowing feelings. It was completely irrational, because it didn't matter in the slightest to Sakaki that Tomo, for all her trembling lashes and her petulant whining, had lapped up being the centre of the other two girls' attention. Sakaki's own attention had been fully occupied with Maya. She... just didn't quite like it, that was all.

Of course, Tomo deserved scolding, although not quite so much as she received. It was hardly unexpected. Yomi gave Tomo hell, but it was transparently because she'd suffered a genuine moment of alarm when Tomo had cried out like that.

Kagura had hauled Tomo over the coals, too. That had been a little less expected, but Sakaki decided it was not all that remarkable, when she thought about it. After all, Tomo and Kagura had an abundance of things in common. They were both everything Sakaki was not: outgoing, spirited, vibrant, _cute._ There was a moment of envious bitterness in that thought, as Sakaki brought to mind the image of Tomo with her small, slender frame and a face that sparkled with mischief, beside Kagura with her glossy hair feathering around her winter-tanned, luminous face. Both girls had a vivid energy that made Sakaki feel grey and sullen and dull in contrast. They had some lively quality that was leagues away from how she saw herself in her jaded mind's eye. Sakaki herself was never quite sure when to laugh, when it came so readily to both of them; she could turn into the cat princess who saved Tokyo wwith quite as much ease as she could chime in with casual banter or snap a furious reply. It was natural that two girls as impulsive and open as Tomo and Kagura would find themselves partners in crime, while Sakaki, too quiet, too earnest, too restrained was left on the outside.

It was stupid to be jealous of that. After all, she was no longer prepubescent and friendless, weird, scary Sakaki with no friends, stuck forever on the outside. Ever since the day when Chiyo had asked her to come along on her summer trip, Sakaki had been part of a group, without ever quite being sure how it had happened. Friendship with Kagura had happened the same way: without apparently needing to say or do anything, Sakaki had found her self-appointed rival always, somehow, by her side. Her friend..

Sakaki rolled over and groped in the heap of fluff and felt until she found one particular toy. It was almost completely dark, but she had no difficulty picking out this precise one. She had long kept and surreptitiously added to her secret, shameful, beloved collection of stuffed cats, but this one was a shamelessly girly pink kitten, even if it looked white when the lack of light drained colour from the world. Sakaki knew, without needing to see, that it was embellished by bows that had been tied with completely incompetent hands. She kept her own things immaculate, but she had never been tempted to retie these bows.

It had joined her collection on her birthday, although as far as she knew no one had known. Parties were things to amuse adorable children like Chiyo, not for her. Yet somehow, little gifts had turned up on her desk and in her shoe locker throughout the day, while her friends grinned. Kagura had handed her the cat without attempting to hide what she was doing, her summer-brown skin flushed like a ripening apple and her slanted eyes luminous, transparently divided between embarrassment and pride. Sakaki, mutely amazed at Kagura's intensity, carefully took off the clumsily arranged wrappings of creased paper.

"You like cats, don't you? And cute things?" At Sakaki's mute nod, Kagura had beamed, although she was still blushing. _Cute_ , Sakaki thought, with envy tinged with a touch of something else entirely. She suspected that when _she_ blushed, she looked like a Coke billboard. "Well, yeah, I thought you might like this. I put the bows on myself. It's no big deal. It's not as if you'll ever find another cat that doesn't want you dead, so I thought I'd give you one you could cuddle and stuff, without losing a vital limb."

Sakaki had managed monosyllabic thanks, her own cheeks pink - _pink!_ No one else had given her anything frippery and pink, even when she was a little girl. She'd been given practical, stylish, adult things that were too grownup for a little girl, even one who towered over children two years her senior, and no one had ever guessed her desperate craving for things that were frilly, feminine... cute.

Kagura paid attention.

Sakaki knew that the source of her discomfort and jealousy was only that, ever since Kagura had unilaterally decided Sakaki was her rival and began treating her as something like a best friend, all of her attention had been focused unwaveringly on Sakaki. Sakaki wasn't used to that kind of attention, not in that way. She was used to being the _centre_ of attention because she was too tall, too smart and physically powerful, too _scary_. Kagura's attention was something entirely different: intensely, almost embarrassingly focused, and somehow personal. It took the concrete form of pink, bow-embellished cats.

Sometimes, Sakaki wanted to tell Kagura other things, to give her the other pieces of the puzzle. To tell her that sometimes she pretended to herself that Chiyo was her own daughter to love and cuddle and look after; to admit that she would touch the petals of a flower, so fragile that it made her shiver, and wish she could shrink and soften and become a blossom herself; to confess that she dreamed sometimes that she was capable of swooning into chivalrous arms. Sometimes, Sakaki suspected that Kagura already knew.

After all, she'd given Sakaki a pink cat.

Sakaki turned over onto her side and snuggled the pink cat into her arms, letting the jealousy drain away and pretending the cat was her Maya, that she could feel heat and sleepy purrs vibrating through it instead of unresponsive cloth. She'd slept hugging this toy nearly every night since Kagura had given it to her, but it was no substitute for the real thing. Still... she could pretend, while she must.

Just like she pretended there was warm, soft weight spooned against her back, gentle breath ticking her neck and a drowsily protective arm draped over her, cuddling both Sakaki and her cat close, keeping them from all harm. In the moments before sleeping, Sakaki felt her awkward consciousness of her size and her lack of feminine smallness and prettiness, the uncountable things she classed under the category 'cute', melt away. As she fell into her dreams she was delicate, shielded, feminine... adored.

Ridiculous, for a grim giant like herself, she knew. Boys were intimidated by her, unless they were hideously, uncomfortably fascinated by her outsize endowments. (Outsize, again; Sakaki longed to be small and sweet, but no matter how much she shrank inside herself, she was always took up too much room, was too generous, too _much._ She knew it and loathed it with helpless hatred.) In any case...

She'd been a little afraid of high school, but somehow she'd managed to evade the issue. The girls who had befriended her seemed entirely uninterested in either the rehearsals of husband hunting or the casual sexual encounters that other girls seemed to take for granted. Tomo and Yomi were too preoccupied with their queer, bristling, all-conquering friendship, Osaka was simply too, well, _unique_ to comfortably contemplate in a relationship, and Kagura... Kagura had to focus on her training, that was obvious, and had no time or interest to spare for boys. Besides, there was Chiyo, and how could the rest of them date when they had a little girl as the centre of their group? It wouldn't be fair on her, when she already resented her lack of maturity.

Sakaki was glad that the subject rarely arose and was casually dismissed when it did. The concept of commitment-free encounters was alien to her serious bent of character and she had no desire to date, even if she had the opportunity. She knew that there were very few boys who would have the courage to even attempt to sweep a monster like herself of her feet. In any case, when she let herself imagine someone kind and gallant, it was rarely male. The thought was too familiar and somehow too at ease with her everyday female world to be shoved away.

She knew that some of the other girls at school played at crushes or even more adult games; their parents winked their eyes at it, trusting that they were only experimenting at love. By the time they graduated from university they were supposed to be ready for the real thing in the way of marriage and babies. It didn't feel like a substitute to Sakaki, despite the fact that she'd never been so much as kissed. When she'd heard the Westernised term _'bian_ , it had played in her mind for days afterwards, until it lost its half-terrifying fascination and had somehow sunk under her skin. 'Bian. It wasn't so bad, really, except that in her mind it would only work if she was petite and cute like Tomo. She'd be expected, she supposed, to be cool and hard instead, while looking after some dainty little thing who deserved attention and protection. She could never be the kind of _'bian_ who could aspire to a nice girl to come home to who would let her snuggle on her lap, as her own lap was filled with purring cats. Cats recognised Sakaki as their natural enemy, and no girl would want a great lumbering heavy thing on her lap.

In the last year or so, the girl in Sakaki's dreams had a deep tan and arms toned with swimming. She was maybe a little short, but she was strong enough to hold Sakaki close, and snuggle her from behind when they slept.

Sakaki burrowed closer under the blankets, holding her precious cat tight. Maya had broken her curse, she told herself if it had not already been broken the day she was befriended by Chiyo. If Sakaki could win the love of such a wonderful cat, perhaps her future would fall into place. She could learn to be a vetinarian after all. If the animals rejected her, she would, she planned dreamily, take Maya with her to the surgery, where her wonder cat could pacify her patients and teach them to love her. Miracles happened, after all: she, Sakaki, had real friends, and a _cat._

Maybe, just maybe, there would be another miracle, a girl brave enough to tackle her, a girl who was brash and tomboyish and oddly sensitive, a girl who could make Sakaki, for a few short moments, feel like the girl she had always wished she was. Maybe the future could be wonderful, after all.

Sakaki kissed the head of the toy cat and settled to sleep. In her already half-dreaming mind, the toy cats in her room beamed kitty beams at her, lining up and waving flags, cheering her on towards to her future.

If she had Maya, anything at all was possible. Even Kagura.

 


End file.
